Just what is happening with the pension funds…??

With the ongoing nightmare on Wall Street, banks being nationalised or going bust. The economy spiralling out of control. What has happened to pension funds…? Pensions are invested on the stock market and with some financial advisers it is more a demonstration of Russian roulette by gambling with your livelihood and security in old age. Many companies already have deficits and with the sudden crash expect more.

One London local authority pension fund was investing in Fannie Mae this summer. This after it was clear that the housing debt in the US was toxic. Local council workers seem to have been the fall guys lined up to be landed with some of the tab for the credit crunch…well you wouldn’t want the chaps to take the hit would you? The same pension fund took a huge hit on Lehman Brothers as well.

Do you know how your pension fund is invested? If not in toxic debt then in a company you were protesting against outside the Excel Centre arms fair or perhaps a company doing some viral marketing to get teenagers to smoke cigarettes. Unlikely though to be in anything making the world a decent place to grow old in. Where are the bonds to develop affordable housing or to make the existing housing stock energy efficient? What about investment in medical research or in alternative transport or sustainable agriculture? If you want something riskier with the potential for growth why not start-up funds for firms with something worthwhile to market? Or a whole vast array of things that need resources to produce the goods and service that are needed to make sure the world is a better place in the future?

The whole financial system is one vast con to make sure that the ordinary people of the world who have to work for a living get royally ripped off. Whatever the discontinuities of the last week this is the continuity that the bosses are looking to preserve. The example of the people in the US bombarding congress with phone calls and emails is one that we should all look to follow. We need to raise people’s understanding of these things. Not part of what makes your life worth living but if you do not understand it and do not think about it the bosses will be happy to do the thinking and deciding for you. Yes we will end up slaving away to 80…if we let them.

A couple of years ago local authority staff took a one-day strike throughout Britain to defend their pension rights. The strike was intended to be the opening shot in a long campaign to defend people’s pension rights. The turnout for the strike was good with successful picket lines. The union leadership spoke left and acted right. Bizarrely they announced a victory as they sold out the strike’s demands. People will strike if they know that they are defending their future standards of living. There needs to be campaigning around not just the level of pension provision but the nature of it. This will also help defeat attempts to use divide and rule tactics pitching private sector employees against public sector workers.

This is something that people can organise around. Organise, organise, organise and when you have finished organising…organise a whole lot more.

That way you might just be victorious.

Useful articles about the credit crunch can be viewed on the LRC website as part of LEAP.